568: Chapter 568 Unqualified, Promotion Postponed

The third floor of the China Writers Association headquarters, the Data Monitoring Center.

The red countdown numbers in the upper right corner of the main wall screen continued to tick.

Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan stood at the head of the long table, his left hand resting on the edge, his gaze fixed on the two starkly different colored curves in the center of the large screen.

The blue one hugged the top, its trajectory as steady as a mountain ridge, even slowly rising by a visible margin.

That was the effective reading completion rate for "qin opera."

The other, a red curve, had been plummeting from its midday peak, as if something were pressing down on its neck and holding it underwater; it struggled a couple of times, but continued to sink deeper.

He Yuanda stood before the console, his fingers hovering at the edge of the keyboard for two seconds before pressing the refresh key. The data jumped.

The tail end of the red curve dropped another 0.3 percentage points.

"It's at 19.1%." He Yuanda's voice was somewhat dry.

He dragged the system alert window that popped up on the screen to the center and turned to look at Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan.

"The completion rate for 'three or two things in jincheng' has fallen from twenty-five this morning to below nineteen in less than ten hours."

His finger tapped on the border of the alert window.

"According to the rules, if the effective reading completion rate falls below 18.0%, the work will be marked as 'Data Substandard,' the promotion candidacy will be automatically suspended, and it will be transferred to manual review. The review only checks for data anomalies; the actual completion rate will not be recalculated."

Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan did not speak. He Yuanda refreshed it again. 19.08%.

"It's still dropping," he said.

Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan picked up his thermos, took a sip of warm water, and set the cup back down on the table with a soft sound.

"Just keep watching it."

He Yuanda nodded. He dragged the alert window to the bottom left corner of the screen and fixed his gaze back on the intersection area of the two curves.

The reading for the blue curve was fixed at 84.6, up another 0.2 from an hour ago.

The countdown numbers were still ticking. 09:51:03.

He Yuanda's fingers hovered above the keyboard. He was waiting for that moment. Waiting for the red line to be completely crushed.

Nine minutes later, the tail end of the red curve finally crossed the gray dashed line marked "18.0."

The system popped up a new window. At the top was a line of bold red text:

[Warning: Entry #0217 'three or two things in jincheng' effective reading completion rate is below the system threshold (18.0%), triggering the automatic suspension review mechanism. The promotion candidacy status for this work has been paused.]

He Yuanda withdrew his hand from the keyboard and leaned back into his chair.

"It's dropped below." He turned to look at Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan.

Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan's expression didn't change at all. He shifted his gaze from the red curve to the countdown numbers. 09:41:37.

"The system judged it itself," Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan's voice was flat. "We didn't touch it."

He Yuanda nodded. He moved the mouse to the work page for "three or two things in jincheng" and clicked on the status bar.

The green icon that originally represented "Promotion Candidacy" had turned gray. Next to the gray icon was a line of small text: [Ineligible, Promotion Suspended.]

He Yuanda stared at that gray box for three seconds. He suddenly remembered that when Shen Jiangping's creative commentary was first released, the click count had rebounded into the top five.

At that time, several people in the Technical Department were asking the same question: Can you really pull the data up with a creative commentary? Now the answer was right in front of him. You can't.

Readers came in, finished reading the creative commentary, opened the main text with expectations, and then left within the first three chapters. One after another.

The better the creative commentary was written, the greater the discrepancy with the main text. The more people who came in, the more people who were lost. The drop in the completion rate was something Shen Jiangping had pushed with his own hands.

He Yuanda moved the mouse to the right and opened the detailed data panel for the blue curve. "qin opera." Effective reading completion rate: 84.9%. Total long reviews: 1247. Collection conversion rate: 31.2%.

The three sets of data hung side by side on the screen, stable to the point of being cold.

Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan stood up and tightened his thermos.

"Keep watching it. Before the channel closes, take a screenshot of the final data for the archives." "Understood."

Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan tightened the thermos and turned to leave. Just before reaching the door, he paused.

"Yuanda." "Vice Chairman Zhou."

"You asked me before why we didn't intervene earlier." He Yuanda was stunned for a moment. Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan didn't turn around; his voice came from over his shoulder.

"Now you see," he said. "The system judged it itself, the data dropped on its own, and the readers cast their own votes. The Writers Association didn't touch a single piece of data."

"If we had banned the paid posters from the start, there would be a thousand voices outside saying the Writers Association is suppressing private publishing. But now? The system rules are written there; if it's not qualified, it's not qualified. No one can find fault with it."

He Yuanda looked at the gray box, speechless for a long while. Vice Chairman Zhou Wenyuan pushed the door open and left. The sound of footsteps in the corridor faded away.

He Yuanda turned back to the screen and reorganized all the panels. The countdown was still ticking. Less than ten hours left.

He took a screenshot of the two curves side by side. Blue on top, red on the bottom. The gap was so large that it didn't even look like they were in the same competition anymore.

East Fourth Ring Road, Beijing. The lights in Shen Jiangping's study were off. The curtains were drawn tight; only the cold light from the laptop screen illuminated half of Shen Jiangping's face, making it look deathly pale.

He had been sitting in this chair for nearly five hours. His shirt was partially untucked from his trousers, the collar button was undone, and his hair, having been repeatedly clawed at, was as messy as if he had just woken up.

There were three empty coffee cups scattered on the desk; the coffee stain at the bottom of the first one had already dried into a brown ring.

His fingers hovered over the F5 key, pressing it every few seconds. The entry page for the Kunpeng Youth Award reloaded repeatedly, and every time the loading finished, his gaze locked onto the number in the top left corner.

18.3. 18.1. 17.9. Shen Jiangping's fingertips sprang off the keyboard. He stared at that number on the screen, his lips parted twice, but no sound came out.

A gray system notification box popped up on the right side of the page. [Ineligible, Promotion Suspended.] Eight characters. Gray text, gray background, gray box.

The green icon on the page that originally represented "Promotion Candidacy" had disappeared. Shen Jiangping froze in place. His back was pressed against the chair, his shoulder blades tensed tightly.

His breathing rate accelerated, and his chest heaved with increasing intensity. He moved. His fingers kept slamming onto F5, refreshing the page. Gray. Refresh again. Gray. Refresh again. Still gray.

Shen Jiangping clicked on the status description again and again, and refreshed the page again and again, but the screen only ever returned the repeated prompt: "Current status of this work: Promotion Suspended."

The sound of his breathing was exceptionally clear in the quiet study. Short, rapid, accompanied by a wheezing sound squeezed from the depths of his throat.

Shen Jiangping grabbed his phone. He flipped the address book to the section starting with "Chu." Chu Pengshu. He pressed the dial button. The ringing tone continued until it automatically disconnected.

He immediately redialed; the screen lit up for half a minute, but still, no one answered. Shen Jiangping took the phone away from his ear and stared at the name on the screen.

Chu Pengshu's apology statement was still hanging on the forum homepage. "Effective immediately, all cooperation with the publishing group is terminated." "Cease publishing literary criticism indefinitely." Every single word seemed to be telling him: This line is broken.

Shen Jiangping threw the phone onto the desk and turned to look at the computer screen. He opened the literary forum homepage.

The first hot post that caught his eye: [Chu Pengshu apologizes and retires from the circle: This is the integrity a critic should have] 43,000 reposts.

The second one: [Chen Jingzhi deconstructs the implicit structure of 'qin opera,' a textbook-level textual analysis] 28,000 reposts.

The third one: ['three or two things in jincheng' completion rate drops below the system line? The mass reading channel is truly a mirror of truth] ...